This bit of foolery in a recent issue of
the student magazine BoUNCe is part of a
long tradition at Carolina: making fun of
anything earnestly debated on campus; in
fact, making fun of pretty much anything
and everything. Student-produced humor
publications — some glossy and long-lived,
some ephemeral bits of mimeography —
have been around since at least 1846.
They’ve provoked controversy, caused eyes
to roll and given undergraduates a way
both to hone their sarcasm skills and to
find out just how much they can get away
with.

Some targets of student mockery are
perennial. In a play he wrote for Carolina’s
first real humor magazine, The Tar Baby,
novelist Thomas Wolfe ’ 20 had the students
of Trinity — the proto-Duke — chant,
“Let us gather ’round the maypole, comrades, in our happy boyish way. ... For I’m
to be queen of the May, brothers, I’m to be
queen of the May.”

Food was another favorite subject. In
the 1920s, The Tar Baby derided the offerings at Swain Hall, then the main dining
facility. Sliced Bread, a tabloid from the
early 1990s, announced a cheap meal plan
that let students eat what was left behind
on others’ trays (“New from Marriot:
Sloppy Seconds”). Last year, BoUNCe
chimed in with “The ‘South Campus’
Diet,” which revealed that the Rams Head
cafeteria “has attempted to deter students
from unhealthy options by using unacceptable quantities of sugar, lemon juice,
Worcestershire Sauce, and tapeworm eggs.”

While some targets of student humor
have remained consistent, the older the
publication, the harder it is for later generations to find it funny. In part, that’s because
some jokes depend on knowledge that’s
now widely forgotten. A cartoon in a 1923